This Summer Stinks. But at Least We’ve Got ‘Old Town Road.’

And what socio-economic class gets to enjoy this "global community." ? It's entertainment, kids.

The lowest common denominator keeps getting lower and more common. So what?

"Old Town Road" is the worst song I've ever heard. The fact that it's been number 1 for so long brings shame to our culture. Nothing to celebrate here, whatsoever.

Am I the only one who when they see the first few seconds of this video, think of Blazing Saddles?

This song makes joy when I listen to it-from the beat, to the video, to Billy Ray Cyrus, to the melding together of two musical genres and now to the video of the kids jumping up and down! Love it!!

There is truth here, and I might applaud it as you do, Mr. Manjoo, but my applause comes with qualifications. I'm an artist myself, and while I see the proliferation of the forms through streaming, through the digitization (and increased accessibility) of the production process (the 'home studio,' self-publishing, iPhone shot and edited films), I also see that being an artist for a living is becoming more and more difficult. Consider the case of some very good friends of mine, a band in Nashville, TN. Their music has been featured on car commercials, and on network TV episodes, feature films (Mike Berbiglia's "Don't Think Twice,") and even on Starbucks Coffee mixes. They've played Bonaroo, and SXSW (officially and unofficially), The Mercury Lounge, Stubb's (in Austin). The lead singer, songwriter and arranger, who is, in my opinion, a genius, works at Trader Joe's. Most of my friends are artists. Writers, musicians, visual artists, theater and film makers. Every one of them works a(nother) job to pay the bills. Because art, in the USA, is not, actually, valued for what it can do for the culture - how it can unite us. Art, as you hint at, has become another product. What you see as a shared global cultural phenomenon may actually be marketing dollars at work. Thirty years ago, my friend would have been comfortably situated - or at least paid - for his work. Now he stocks the shelves, while 'Old Town Road,' plays on the PA.

Well, Mr. Manjoo, if this tedious, indeed, annoying song gives you and others hope, who am I to say otherwise. Enjoy your illusion about a "shared global culture" created by social media. But speaking as an old-timer, I can say this hardly compares with times when music REALLY crossed genre lines, racial boundaries, and urban-rural divisions, and actually promoted political change: Rock n'Roll in the 1950s and Motown in the 1960s. After that, popular music fragmented into the corporate-inspired niches that grew ever more numerous and individually smaller over the years. This little one-hit wonder will be forgotten in a few months, along with Lil Nas X, and we'll be back to the usual assorted dreck that goes in one ear and out the other. Me? I really love jazz, blues, and country, i.e. people's music, that is even older than I am.

Bless Farhad Manjoo for writing this post. Anytime when a smart, scholastically solid teenage daughter smiles on her Dad because he finally discovered this good song; you are thankful to Manjoo.... But Manjoo, I did not have a bad summer despite all the tantrums of Trump and rightful anxieties caused by him. News from a country (UK) which is on the verge of implosion (due to Brexit) as well as overall European Sport kept me happy. To start with, you had Cricket World Cup, then Megan Rapinoe set ablaze the soccer world followed by some great Tennis at the Wimbledon (followed by some out of the world Test Cricket in the Ashes Series). I am just amazed by the amount of Block Bluster Global Entertainment put forward by a tiny country like UK and Europe in general in the summer of the northern hemisphere. We all are consumers of that. And to cap it all, we have had so far beautifully mild and pleasant Californian Summer as predicted per the impact of Global Warming. So you "can't tell me nothing"; old town road is good, old-time ways to spend summer are good too. Thanks.

Sippin whiskey out the bottle Never thinking 'bout tomorrow... "Singing Sweet Home Alabama, all summer long..."

Celebrating the record-smashing gay black and so very young cowboy! It cracked me up! And then there's the Jonas Bros redux - great production on that song.

“There’s little to complain about” Many struggling artists would beg to differ.

Cute... all the kiddies locked up in the summer school seem to know the same tune. Well, most of them. A few are standing there wondering what is going on. For most of us, this is not a good thing in culture -- the monotony of sharing the "latest" thing (which is more likely a reboot from other artists, in other times...) If you like monetonizing the culture, capturing confined children, or seeing everyone sing the same song and requote the same movie lines from sea to shining sea, sure, this is progress to you.

You gotta love something in this divided world to find something that many can get behind and love. I've always believed that culture can bring us together. Culture (and food) is what we gather around. And today, we need to gather together more face-to-face. So thank you Lil Nas X for finding something we can agree on and gather around.

I usually shun current hip hop because I was raised on the greats (e.g., Chuck D, KRS One, Rakim, MC Lyte) but this Gen-Xer loves this song!

Cheeky genre-mixing will not solve all our problems.

Generation Z is making it's debut this summer, and they couldn't care less for your genre labels, which were stupid to begin with. Whether it's black or white or binary or non binary or New York or Kansas, what matters is the output. And as this song shows, when we combine the artistic powers and traditions of our most talented, the end result can be utterly fantastic. Look- the Recess Peanut Butter Cup was one of our greatest inventions. Chocolate and Peanut Butter, each amazing in their own right, combined into one makes for something brilliant.

It is kind of cool and catchy. And the younger kids really love it! M

"The song’s twangy, earworming". That's exactly what I despise about it. Throw in the Macarana and I'll take the Old Town Road out of town right quick.

"Old Town Road" is brilliance and genius brought down from the heavens to light these dark times.

Yeah, in the age of Trump what we all share is that nobody can tell us nothin. Proud of our ignorance, now we can tap it out to a catchy pop tune. Our life is one big movie, we’re all the stars of the show, and everything we wear is a product placement, from the top our Gucci hat to the bottom of our Wrangler blue jeans. An anthem for the age alright. I like the little tune, but darn, Partner, this piece is all hat and no cattle.

The refrain of "Old Town Road" is "can't nobody tell me nothing ..." It is a fun pop song, with an addictive melody, but that refrain is something that would, and does, come out of the mouth of our narcisistic "leader".

Disney's stories are not universal. They are Disneyfied versions of better stories that are mostly borrowed and rearranged from Western archetypes and Western narrative tropes.

This OpEd put a big smile on my face. LilNas X's hit arrives at a time when a little realism simplicity and Farhad's comments might be exactly what America needs right now.

Lil Nas X is an accomplished artist. Old Town Road is certainly upbeat. And how about those lyrics? Depressing! Can't nobody tell me nothin' You can't tell me nothin' Cheated on my baby You can go and ask her My life is a movie The anthem of summer 2019?

This column is the first piece of journalism that has made me smile in months. Lil Nas X’s song is a banger for sure. If there were bangers for journalism, this piece more than qualifies.

A great piece. Love this song. Why are the YouTube videos ‘unavailable’?!?!??

My kids made me listen to this song. I guess I’m too old to “get it”. Based on the lyrics all I hear is an ignorant misogynist’s anthem. Maybe the video changes the context of the words? I’ll have to check it out.

I keep picturing that meme of Forrest Gump staring at the camera saying, "And just like that, all the country music fans were listening to a gay black rapper..."

Black, Gay, Cowboy, Banjo 'stead of gui-tars, Humble, smiling, Poking fun at country stars... High-hats, bass-line, Gucci, Porsche, Who hasn't googled, Fendi Sports Bra?

Ohhh puhleeeze. What rubbish, I don’t care how popular it is, it’s still drivel.

I don't know anything about Lil Nas X....absolutely nothing. Change that: I now know something as a result of your column. I know slightly more about bow ties...and would like to see you in your columnist bow tie.

Love the song! It is a big hit in my Zumba class!

I can't confirm - apparently I am too fragmented to participate in this alleged new globally shared culture. Although I spend a lot of time on the internet, with memes and news and streaming and listening to music on Spotify, I've not heard that song yet and I've not watched that Avenger movie. Neither country nor rap music appeal to me, and I got tired of all the superhero movies about 500 years ago. That trash just keeps on coming, it's making me furious. How many Avengers movies are there? It feels like there must be dozens. Superhero flicks killed blockbuster cinema for me. They're a disease. I did watch Game of Thrones (and read the books before that), but even 44 million viewers is actually a rather small number compared to the size of the global audience. At my office, nobody else knows this show. So no, actually this shared global culture does not exist. There are just smaller and bigger fragments. And the bigger fragments are shared by a very large number of people, who nonetheless are still a small and dispersed part of the global audience.

If this was meant as a column to assure us, peace and tranquility are not as far as we seem to think, it's a very serious fail. I have a close relative who loves Mahalia Jackson. It is often playing when I go to visit. She is still angry about Brown vs. Board of Education. She still is angry about busing. She thinks interracial marriages are wrong. She left her lifelong church because the minister had presided over one in the sanctuary. Modern racism is not disposited by what entertainment one likes. That is not how racism works in mass psychology nor is it how systemic racism works. The Id can smile at one second and growl at another.

I loved the joyousness, optimism, sexiness, humor, and wonderful word play of of rap and hip hop since my youth in NYC in the 1980s. But these days, in the dark of night, I don't care at all about how creative and fun we are as a species. I have night sweats about the fact we are rendered null by having unwound our world (our childrens' world) by destroying the climate. It never needed to happen.

I like the song, and I like the artist. But I can’t share your optimism. That “long tail of media choice” is how technology kills creativity. Instead of artistic experimentation and an audience inspired by discovery, the algorithm simply directs the same old sounds to an audience programmed to demand more of what it has heard before.

I first heard this song when my 11-year-olds started singing it incessantly. And I love it! I'm not sure why people feel the need to comment here about what a bad song it is -- obviously a huge number of people disagree, since it's so popular. If you don't like it that's fine, don't listen to it. (Mostly I think people love to think they're better than pop culture, and think it's somehow enlightened to dismiss things that become too popular.) It's catchy, it's funny, it's genre-crossing. Lil Nas X is pretty cool. It's nice to just relax and enjoy something during this long awful summer.

The first time I heard this song I wasn’t a fan, but the more it played on the radio the less I resisted. It’s catchy and upbeat. If you think you don’t like this song, watch the video of him perform in front of the elementary school kids - that video makes me laugh every time and now when I hear it on the radio I only think of them jumping up and down, screaming the words :)

Sorry, Old Town Road breaking the record as the longest-running number 1 spot in Billboard’s history is in fact, proof that this summer stinks. Of all the number 1 songs in Billboard’s history, this song holds the record? The heat has addled all our brains.

All I think of when I hear that kind of beat are the kids with idiotically loud woofers in their cars who drive by in the middle of the night. No thanks!

Maybe its because I'm in my 40s, but this is the first time I actually went to Youtube to actually listen to this song and frankly it wasn't even worth the 4 mins. And yet in the past 2 weeks I have been listening obsessively to a song, the Crossing, by Johnny Clegg who recently died. A song with so much meaning. Take a listen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBpMHxtZeMA

Tick, tock. Clip, clop. One step at a time, one beat at a time, over and over again until we get there. We're with you Farhad, and all you good, life-affirming music people out there.

No Mr. Manjoo, These syntheses of music and culture have been going on...well...forever. We didn't need the Internet to bring together African and Appalachian music, or any one of a zillion accidental, beautiful confluences that created the Earth’s cultural richness. If anything, the Internet has mostly served to homogenize. And one little video phenomenon does nothing to offset the damage the Internet’s bid-data exploiters have done to democracy, truth, and the potential for peace.

I would aruge that it's just the objectively "least bad" that happened this summer. Because everything sucks now. Everything.

If you like Old Town Road, check out The Git Up by Blanco Brown--another genre-bending earworm!